Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander

Michelle Alexander was born on October 7th, 1967 and is currently 58 years old. Michelle Alexander was born in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Alexander attended Vanderbilt University where she received a B.A. degree and Stanford University where she received a J.D. degree.

Michelle Alexander is best known as a legal scholar, advocate, and civil rights lawyer in addition to being the author of the critically acclaimed work The New Jim Crow. Her work was a bestseller that transformed the national debate on criminal and racial justice in the United States.

After graduating from college, she worked as a clerk for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Harry A. Blackmun and U.S. Court of Appeals D.C. Circuit Chief Judge Abner Mikva. It was in 2005 that she won a Soros Justice Fellowship, which she used to write the work The New Jim Crow.

Before joining academia, Michelle Alexander worked in both the nonprofit and private sectors in civil rights litigation and even worked for the Northern California office of the ACLU Racial Justice Project. During her time there, she worked in coalition building, grassroots organization, and media advocacy against racial profiling.

During her time in academia, she has worked at several universities, and at some point, she was a director of the Civil Rights Clinic and associate professor of Law at the Stanford Law School. She is currently a columnist with The New York Times and a Union Theological Seminary visiting professor.

Alexander has been featured in a variety of national television and radio outlets such as C-Span, MSNBC, Democracy Now!, NPR, Tavis Smiley, CNN, Real Time with Bill Maher, The Colbert Show, and Bill Moyers Journal.

Michelle Alexander published her work The New Jim Crow in 2010. In this book, the author asserts that racial caste has not ended in the United States but has merely been redesigned. According to Alexander, legal racial segregation and Jim Crow have now been replaced by mass incarceration to control African Americans.

Michelle Alexander reviews racial history in the United States right from the colonial period to the Clinton administration and to the present iteration that is best known as the war on drugs. She showcases the consequences of mass incarceration on former prisoners who will live with the pain of being denied public benefits, employment, education, and housing for the rest of their lives.

Michelle Alexander: Lists & Other Mentions

• The 1619 Project was the Black Men Read Book Club December 2021 Pick.
• The 1619 Project was a New York Times: #1 Nonfiction Best Seller in 2021 and 2022.
• The New Jim Crow has made several lists including:
  1. New York Times: 100 Best Books of the 21st Century Selection in 2024.
  2. Book Riot: 25 of the Best Nonfiction Books of All Time Selection in 2022.
  3. Reader's Digest: 50 Best Nonfiction Books of All Time Selection in 2024.
  4. Los Angeles Times: The 30 Best Non-Fiction Books of the Last 30 Years Selection in 2025.
  5. GQ: The 50 Best Books of Literary Journalism Selection in 2021.

Related Authors

Fans of Michelle Alexander also enjoy these authors:

1. Stephen King, author of The Dark Tower Series.
2. Andy Weir, author of: Project Hail Mary.
3. J.K. Rowling, author of the Harry Potter Series.
4. John Green, author of: The Fault in Our Stars.
5. Fredrik Backman, author of: A Man Called Ove.

Michelle Alexander: F.A.Q